


Speaking of Sex

by daystarsearcher



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Introspection, Missing Scene, Seeds of Doom, more like 'Seeds of Totally Making Out Behind That Log'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:10:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5546777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daystarsearcher/pseuds/daystarsearcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few missing scenes from 'Seeds of Doom,' along with some introspection and analytical thinking about sex from Sarah and the Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speaking of Sex

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle.
> 
> Doctor Who is the property of the BBC; I claim no credit for these characters and receive no payment for writing this.

She has ideas about sex.

It’s a pity most of them seem to contradict each other.

The first ideas are the ones that were never quite said, the ones that seemed to be imparted by osmosis or telepathy or the way the proper church-going women and their upright daughters slid over gaps in the conversation, left certain words and whole sentences unspoken. _It’s not nice. It’s not a thing nice girls do until they’re married, and then it’s certainly not something they seek out, or_ enjoy. _We don’t have to worry about you, do we, Sarah? Not a good girl like you._

And before that recollection is even finished, she can hear her Aunt Lavinia, imperious and irritable: _Oh, don’t be ridiculous, girl. Sex is merely the form of reproduction of the species that_ homo sapiens _has adapted itself to. A simple biological process._ Nothing to be ashamed of, but nothing to get worked up over either.

The other girls and boys at university seemed sometimes to Sarah Jane to have sex as casually as trying on a new pair of trousers, or eating a bowl of strawberry ice cream. She never attained quite that level of ease, but over time she got better at not flinching at the sudden mental image of those proper upstanding moral women in their pastel skirtsuits, lips pursed, heads shaking in disapproval. She perfected a defiant cast to her chin and a spark in her eye to deflect both the mocking of her relative chastity, and the cloud of disapproval she could feel hovering over her when she slipped from it.

Uni was where she got into feminism, too, and the more she read and talked and argued with its theories and counter-theories, the more the world seemed to make sense. Things fell into place, and she could see so clear how everything worked, and how everything could be fixed. Except for sex. That stayed confusing.

She had professors who believed the act was inherently demeaning to women, that entering into a sexual relationship with a man before political and social equality had been achieved was akin to selling yourself into slavery. One of them lectured Sarah Jane for twenty minutes after the girl let slip a casual remark that she was going to the cinema with a male friend. Other theorists seemed to think that sex had some sort of magical reality-warping power; that by asserting yourself with a man, or men, in the bedroom, independence and equality would flow easily and naturally into all the other nooks and crannies of your life. At a particularly low point in the semester, Sarah’s thesis advisor used a variation on that argument to bully her into a brief and disastrous affair that almost cost her a journalism fellowship. And in the middle of those two groups, or perhaps off to the side, were those who thought men a lost cause but weren’t ready to give up sex or relationships just yet, who preached sermons about community and “womyn’s healing love.” They were actively despised by the one actual lesbian Sarah Jane knew, a visiting scientist from Cambridge, who called them “huggers” and “fauxmosexuals.” _It’s not that I wouldn’t like to go to bed with you, Sarah Jane. But the bed isn’t big enough for you, me, and your men issues dressed up like a social agenda, do you see? I like to shag girls because I like to shag girls, not because I’m trying to undo centuries of unjust gender inequity._

She thinks, sometimes, about what sex might be for the Doctor. What it might mean to him. He is so human and so very not. She considers asking him, wonders if that would make things clearer or just that much more difficult to understand.

xxxxx

He has ideas about sex.

Two ideas, to be precise. Well, two main ideas. Actually, let’s call them theories, or perhaps hypotheses is better—it’s not as though he’s conducted enough experiments to obtain evidence that would back up an actual theory.

The first is the official Gallifreyan party line: sex is beneath the dignity of the Time Lords. It is a matter for the lower species, those who have yet to perfect genetic engineering and must entrust their future to a splash of coarse hormones and a few sweaty fumblings. So messy, and all for a genetic crapshoot.

_We are Time Lords. We have evolved beyond such things._

He has always thought that beneath this official distaste lies a spectrum of fear running from fascinated apprehension to stark raving terror. _Sex is animal, sex is feral, sex is bloody and brutal. Sex is all the things we once were and have tried so hard not to become again._

It was not so long ago, after all, that the Prydonians built their Pleasure Palace (a site conveniently forgotten by the history books). It was not so long ago that Gallifreyans and lower species alike were made to rut in coliseums for the amusement of the elite, were whipped and chained and made to beg for mercy as the Council stroked themselves and moaned and came on their long robes. As hands gripped and lips sucked, as skin slid against skin. As blood flowed.

The second of his sexual hypotheses comes to him by way of Koschei, though the more he travels the more he suspects Koschei copied the idea off a primitive culture or two and then passed it off as his own. That’d be just like him.

 _Sex is rebellion, sex is revolution._ Koschei’s eyes had gleamed in the half-light of the library (technically closed for hours now) where they sat whispering, huddled together over their books. _It’s the one thing they’ll never really understand. It’s how we’ll break free. Of all their rules, and their restrictions, their xenophobia and their stupid hidebound planet-wide agoraphobia. Of everything._

He wonders, sometimes, what sex might be for Sarah Jane—he has long ago given up trying to figure out what it might mean to humans in general. And truth be told, he doesn’t really care about what sex means to humans in general. He cares about what it means to Sarah Jane.

He wonders how he would ask her, what she would say.

xxxxx

They fall behind the log as the first bombs go off, the Doctor’s hand coming up over her eyes before she can remember to shut them. His other arm goes around her waist, pulls her towards him to cushion her fall, and the way the world moves is one part the explosions and one part his long thin fingers spread wide and pressing tight against her hip, pressing her tight against him.

The world is dark behind her eyelids; the grass tickles her nose and she can smell it freshly crushed, smell the dead leaves crackling against the recently rained-upon earth , the spice of the log’s bark and leaking sap.“I’ve closed them _now_ ,” she says, but the words get swallowed by another explosion of sound and the leaves dance around her face and the Doctor pulls her closer, and his breath is warm and trembles in her hair.

Time has slowed down. The flames make bands of red bloom in the darkness behind her eyelids, stripes that slip through his fingers.

He presses a kiss against the back of her neck. Slowly, slowly, he parts his lips against her skin, presses them to her neck again.

And again.

A trail of warm and wet kisses, and she shivers and leans back into him, arching her neck so that he can reach to drop a kiss just beneath her ear, and then two more along her jawline. Her blood is pounding in her ears and she can feel his double-heartbeart in his lips and against her back, and there is nothing else to hear, nothing at all. 

He shifts, turning her so that are facing each other and then rolling her onto her back, and then he hovers above her, his breathing so harsh she could drown in it, and she can feel his lips slightly parted and barely an inch from hers…

They realize that the bombs have stopped going off at exactly the same time; like a flipped switch their eyes open wide and they scramble to peep over the edge of the log at the charred remains of the estate (and hopefully the Krynoid as well) and at the approaching U.N.I.T. soldiers.

They are still so close, and he cannot resist leaning in just a little bit more, to breathe in the smell of her hair.

xxxxx

She has ideas about the way sex _should_ be. They are abstract and unformed, and refuse to be put into words. But they’re there in the rumble of the Doctor’s voice when he picks a syllable to savor and slide through so deep and scratchy-soft that it’s like a caress. In that mad toothy grin like fireworks and danger, and the way his mouth hangs open slightly when he’s just been woken, soft and vulnerable. The way his eyes turn from gentle to piercing ice in a heartbeat, and then back again.

xxxxx

He has ideas about the way sex _should_ be. He has tried, rather desperately in fact, not to dwell on them, because if he tries to put them into words the magic may fall apart into nothing more than metaphors and sophistries.

But they’re there. In the way Sarah Jane looks at him sometimes when she thinks he’s engrossed in something else, head tilted down or to the side but eyes looking up at him. A covert sparkle in those eyes, and the corners of her lips just barely lifted in a sly and secret smile that he wonders if she even knows she’s making. It’s there when she stands up to him in his unreasonable moods, in the set of her chin and the tensing of her arms and everything about her that burns with determination, a dynamo so small he could slip her into his pocket. And when she sighs or groans or snaps his name, exasperation with fondness creeping in underneath, and the way she cries it out at other times (usually after she’s figured out he’s not dead after all), “Doctor!” All that sheer boundless human enthusiasm and _joy._

xxxxx

He takes her hand to pull her to her feet, and does not let go when she is standing.

In the backseat of Sir Colin’s car as it speeds back to U.N.I.T. headquarters they do not look at each other, but after a few minutes she inches closer to him and then, hesitant, as if testing the thin pane of ice over water, rests her head against his shoulder.

It is a moment in time he prays will never be rewritten.

xxxxx

She hovers in his lab after everyone but them has left, not knowing what to do with her feet or her arms or her eyes until he takes her hand and leads her into the TARDIS. He takes her palm and kisses it, watches as her eyes flutter almost closed and he murmurs, “My Sarah Jane,” all low and soft and amazed. As if she is the most wondrous discovery he has ever made.

Warmth surges through her so strong that she has to choice but to step forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders, twine her fingers into his curls and press her face against his chest and breathe him all in, the tweed and the wool and his own crisp clean alien familiarity. She plants a kiss on a button of his coat, right between his two hearts.

His own arms wind snug and tight around her, his hands pressing against the back of her dress until she can feel every wrinkle of fabric against her bare skin. He drops a kiss on the top of her head and rests his face there, reveling in the softness of her hair and breathing her in.

She feels a thing like soft knocking at a door in her mind, asking permission. A wordless _May I come in?_

 _Yes_ , she thinks back, and tries to open the door, unfurl her mind like a flower in the sun. He gasps, surging against her in body and mind, his mental touch changing from tentative to bold as he flows into her and he is everywhere inside her sense of self, lighting up her brain like a Christmas tree, no, like explosions, like supernovas—he is surging soaring roaring rivers of fire and ice and she feels him _everywhere_ and _oh God_ she didn’t even know nerve endings could do this, and it’s all she can do to hang on hang on hang on, her nails gripping tight at his shoulders and her lips mouthing breathless pleas against his coat. Her body is pressed so close up against him and it’s not close enough, she wants to burrow into him, she wants to meld and link and sink into him and never ever let go and she can’t stop rubbing against him, the layers and layers of fabric so frustrating but oh God the friction so good and he’s hard against her and rubbing back and she wants nothing but this, him in her arms and her mind and all around her, nothing but this forever and forever—

He gives a choked cry and thrusts hard, one, two, three, and now it is her turn to tumble and fall into his mind, plummeting down wind in her hair (his breath in her hair) and _oh_ it’s not falling, it’s _flying_ —

She comes to in her body dizzy and sated and a little sleepy, slumping in his arms (her legs are jelly and she thinks his can’t be much better, given the way he’s leaning back against the console). They’re both still breathing raggedly, and it makes their bodies shudder and bump against each other in a way that’s so awkward yet improbably wonderful that she wants to sing.

She tilts her head upward, and _oh_ he is making that face again, soft and vulnerable and knocked off his feet with his eyes glazed and his mouth half-open, and nothing, nothing, no power in all the universe, could stop the smile she feels spreading across her face like a sunrise. She stands on tiptoe and kisses him quick on the lips.

“That was brilliant,” she says. “Let’s go try it naked in a bed, shall we?”


End file.
